Happiness and Disaster
by Odyssion
Summary: Yamato is a replacement in so many ways. KakaYama, KakaSasu.


**Happiness and Disaster**

_Disclaimer:_ I don't own Naruto.

_Author's Notes: _I wanted to write a KakaSasu but that proved surprisingly difficult, and then this idea hit and it seemed like a good alternative. KakaYama is slowly becoming a favourite! This would occur right around episode 55 of the anime (don't recall the manga chapter), after the new Team Kakashi return to Konoha from their Sasuke run-in. No big spoilers in this one, not-so-detailed citrus although it's a bit depressing. Comments would be greatly appreciated!

* * *

The hospital room was as comfortable and welcoming as a place of healing could be, but it still felt far too sterile for his taste. Yamato let himself in silently after his knock was greeted with permission to enter, walking quickly toward the far side of the room, feeling enclosed by the whiteness of the walls. Drawing aside the bed curtains, he found one famous, vaguely apathetic jounin staring up at him with half-lidded eyes.

Kakashi's right eye crinkled in a smile as he carefully marked the spot in his book before setting it aside.

"Ah, Tenzou," he patted a spot on the bed beside him, as one does to a child. "Come. Tell me everything."

If this allusion to his supposed youth bothered him, Yamato hid his annoyance as he sat down on the fabric beside Kakashi, letting himself relax more than was advisable for a shinobi. All the while he was walking toward the hospital, he had been trying to form the words he would say in his head. They caught in his throat when he started, but once the story began he found it impossible to curb his own speech, to dull the sharpness of the truth. The painful details of Sasuke's words, the ones he meant to conceal, all tumbled wildly from his lips.

Kakashi's face remained blank when his words were spent. He studied the weathered features hard, trying to discern an emotion. He knew Kakashi would have heard it all from the mission report anyway, but this personal delivery of misery was proving a strain on his nerves. Yamato averted his eyes, searching for a distraction. His gaze fixed on the red swirl etched onto Kakashi's left bicep, curled onto his skin. At the sight of it, the tattoo etched onto his own arm, its identical brother, pulsed with pain.

When he looked up again he found Kakashi peering at him intently and felt his face flush.

"That's everything I have to report, Kakashi-sempai," he stated quickly, trying to hide his flustered state. Even now, so many years later, he can't help but admire the ANBU sempai he had idolized so absolutely. In those days he had thought it impossible that he would have the chance to even associate with such a man, let alone be working with him so closely. He had secretly appreciated that Kakashi remembered him, that he treated him so considerately, almost affectionately. When the famous Copy Nin left ANBU, he still remained Yamato's ideal. Yamato tried to stop his thoughts of him, tried not to think what a waste it was that such a talented man would no longer use his skills, to minutely feel grateful that out of the elite assassination squad he would be safe.

At the moment, with Kakashi's sad eyes gazing down at him, Yamato can't deny even to himself that his feelings hadn't faded at all.

"S-sempai," Yamato stuttered, but Kakashi merely smiled and shook his head. He turned to gaze beyond the window, searching the far horizon. Yamato can only see the profile of his face, hidden by his mask and hitai-ate, but at that moment the truth of Kakashi's feelings hit him fully. Without seeing, even he could tell that Kakashi's eyes were searching the distance for a certain underground hideout, a certain room, a certain dark-haired boy.

"You miss him, don't you?" Yamato said suddenly, and Kakashi's wide-eyed look of surprise confirmed everything. The blood pounding in his ears, the clenching of his heart, made him dangerously reckless. "You'll never forget."

Kakashi's eyes hardened, softened, drifted away. "No. Never."

Yamato's hands had already moved to his sempai's mask, tugging insistently. "Then don't." The tingling familiarity of his shape-shifting, of morphing wood, raced to the tips of his fingers, his toes. Yamato locked their lips together before Kakashi could protest, feeling the last vestiges of the transformation ebb away. When he stepped back, breathless, he was the fully formed replica of the pale-skinned, dark-haired boy he could never replace.

"Sasuke," Kakashi whispered, incredulous. "Tenzou, you're going too—"

"I don't mind," he said, sliding into Kakashi's arms. "Sensei," he added, and the word was lethal.

"Sasuke," Kakashi breathed again, reaching for him. Yamato never hesitated as Kakashi's hands explored the body that wasn't his, as he tried to devour his soul. He had gathered a sample of Sasuke's DNA during the mission when the boy had burst through his domed prison and he doubted that even Kakashi could see any differences in his imitation. He sucked in a breath as Kakashi's hands stroked him, as a warm, wet tongue slid itself inside. It felt different, wrong, right angles pushed together, but he _felt_ it when Kakashi entered him and that alone was enough.

"Sensei," he moaned a second time. Yamato kept his eyes closed, not wanting to see the look of hurt, of disgust, of longing that will surely reside in the other man's eyes.

The pressure mounted in his groin as he neared his climax under the weight of the other's body. Yamato let out a groan of pleasure with every thrust, revelling in the sound of slapping flesh as Kakashi fucked him. He could feel the orgasm overtaking his body with each rough shove of the hips, plunging deeper and deeper until he thought he would lose his mind. At the moment of release, that blissful instant of thoughtless freedom, he lost his concentration just enough to drop the transformation. When he opened his eyes, Kakashi's emotionless face alerted him to the change. He looked at his own tanned skin, the cracked hands so unlike those they had impersonated. Kakashi pulled out of him and suddenly the stinging pain of their actions became perfectly clear. They don't look at each other again. Yamato climbed off the bed, pulled on his clothes without sound, and left in the same fashion.

--

He spies Kakashi across the narrow street, shuffling along in his unhurried way. A twang of some unbidden, unknowable emotion shoots through his body, quick as lightning – it is a thing of strangeness that he feels shaken today after weeks quietude, of acceptance and disregard. When their eyes meet, Kakashi will lift a hand in lazy greeting and he hastens to mimic the motion. It is a cruel irony that they must now work so closely together for the sake of the village, for Naruto. The gap between them will close, slowly, inevitably, until they are face to face at last.

"Ten o'clock tomorrow for training," Kakashi says, smiling slightly.

"Yes, sensei—sempai!" Yamato answers, stumbles, tries to pick up the pieces. Kakashi has already walked past him but he can sense that momentary hesitation, the unnatural pause that occurs when a foot is suspended without relief. Silence separates, protects; Kakashi walks on, decidedly oblivious.

The next time they are unfortunate enough to be sharing the same path, both will silently raise a hand in polite acknowledgement for the instant that their eyes meet. They will look away before any thoughts can form, any mistakes can be made. They are careful that their sleeves do not brush one another as they go separately about their lives. Only a stubborn pride holds Yamato from turning about during these tests of will, to apologize and beg forgiveness. His greatest happiness and his greatest disaster, intermingled in one moment. The silence leaves him empty; if he cries, it is not the first time that he hates more than anything the accursed gift infused in his genetics.

In his impatience, in his greed, Yamato knows that he has soiled and decimated any chance for retribution. In this agonizing aftermath the weight of their flesh, the brevity of their lives, burns itself hauntingly onto his memory. He likes to think that Kakashi understood his feelings although they never speak of it, never allude to it. Yamato is not fool enough to ask. It is simply a fact that they both know to be the truth.

There is nowhere to go from where they began.

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**end**


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